Egypt’s Graeco-Roman period, which covers the centuries around the birth of Christ, saw the cheap mass-production of a large number of terracotta figures, which were the property of ordinary people. The figures’ comprehensive range of motifs provides, first and foremost, an insight into popular belief among Egypt’s ethnically-mixed population, which, in addition to Egyptians also numbered Greeks, and later still, Romans. In the terracottas it is possible to follow a new and distinctive style which evolved from a blend of Greek and Egyptian iconography.
